


Event Horizon

by Robotamputee



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Human Castiel, TOO MANY SADS, fallen!cas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-14
Updated: 2013-06-14
Packaged: 2017-12-14 22:23:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/842047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Robotamputee/pseuds/Robotamputee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas and Dean are on a hunt when everything goes wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Event Horizon

When he called out, I came. Like a lost star to a black hole, I tumbled towards him and was pulled apart by what I saw.

“Cas,” he said, and I winced.

I had been Castiel, once; Angel of the Lord, terrible and infinite and immutable in my glory. I dealt life and death like playing cards, threw them away like the jokers that they were, insignificant in the light of the hand I had been dealt. I once knit the broken bones and shredded arteries of dead men and watched them smile. I created, and what I didn't create, I destroyed.

“It’s okay,” he said, and I cried.

Once, the world had been consumed by fire and blood and exploding Grace. Ashes had smote the ground like sin, like gravestones, and I had walked among them, proud and tall. I had fixed it, fixed everything. I was the Second Great Savior, the Better Son, the Good News on the horizon. I had made the world in blood and fire, and I had thought it was okay then, too.

He laughed, as if he could hear my thoughts. “No more magic fingers, I guess,” was all he said.

I looked down. There was blood on my hands; his blood. Every time his body broke I rebuilt it; even when it was my own will that did the breaking. I rebuilt him in Grace and in purpose and in selfish love so that he might never break again. I wove his bones with my certainty such that when he was beaten, it was my own faith that broke. I left my wounds to fester, and I healed him with bloody fingers and shaking hands.

There was so much blood on my hands.

“Dean,” I said, for he was not listening; he did not understand. I was Castiel, he who had pulled the Righteous Man from Hell. I was Savior and Guardian and Loyal Son, and I was none of that compared to him. I rebuilt him with my faith, broke him with my failings, and rebuilt him again.

“What is it, Cas?” He was listening, now. He could do little else.

So I told him. I told him in whispers, in gasps, in fevered words that burned my throat as they left. I told him of my sins, confessed my mistakes and my fears, begged him for forgiveness for all that I had done.

I told him that I was human, and that I had failed him.

He listened, and then he smiled. “It’s okay, Cas,” he said. “It’s okay. I forgive you.” He touched my face, baptised me with his blood and his tears. My hands were still skimming across his broken body, as if there was any part of him I didn't already know. He caught them in his own, held them still against his beating heart, and sighed.

“Stay,” he said. I couldn't heal him, or ease his pain, or move him from this place. I couldn't help, and I couldn't run, and I couldn't change the past. But I could stay. I could sit with him, listen to him mumble words of false comfort. Remind him of Sam, and Charlie, and those of us who weren't yet ghosts. I could make him smile, still, though I couldn't make him live.

He grew quiet, his hold on my hand gone slack. I was a lonely star. I had fallen into his gravity well aeons ago, and I couldn't leave. So I sat with him. I held him with human hands, watched him die with human eyes, and I was lost.


End file.
